Computer networking and communications are important aspects of daily life. These products and services are the infrastructure through which the Internet operates. The universal benefits of the Internet are well known, enabling immediate worldwide sharing of news and events, access to in-depth research on virtually any topic, sophisticated financial analysis available to all, the convenience of e-commerce available on virtually any product to consumers and the emerging capabilities for commercial e-commerce, and the outsourcing enabled by Application Service Providers and Storage Area Networks, to list just a few of the world-changing available uses.
This explosive growth in network traffic is further demonstrated by forecasts made by many leading networking industry experts regarding scaling specific infrastructure areas. Every aspect of these scaling estimates represents requirements for network equipment to scale to provide the necessary bandwidth.
Telecommunications switches and routing help to meet the needs of many devices to connect to a network and then for the network to communicate with other networks. The increasing demands of Internet traffic require equipment suppliers to develop faster and more efficient techniques for routing traffic. Inside the routers are switches that decode addresses associated with data packets and then direct the data packets to the proper ports. The invention is one such technique for improving switching.